Obama's Agenda (political, of course)

[john-the-author]

Didn't we all just learn that this also happens to be the fatal flaw with the free market?

They somehow manage to have no incentive to serve the stockholders to whom they are supposed to be directly answerable?

Didn't even Alan Greenspan admit that Ayn Rand was a moron?

Your self-interest, objectivist model, as it turns out, is no more than a spherical horse in a void.

Yes, I would also disagree with the idea that socialism leaves managers with no inspiration to serve their market. Shwenn is right: there hasn't been any apparent interest in doing so here and now in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Stupid.

Socialism, it should be added, is not communism, which I don't care for generally and don't feel is workable on a large scale except under very unusual circumstances. Socialism does allow for personal prosperity and the opportunity to excel, but it also identifies things that are going to be, well, socialized. Communism I have always viewed as more of an ant-like society.

 

[rgraham666]

In other words, like your average business.

Actually, that's unfair. Most businesses are feudal in structure rather than Communistic.

 

[john-the-author]

In other words, like your average business.

Actually, that's unfair. Most businesses are feudal in structure rather than Communistic.

Basically, yeah.

 

[trysail]

...Washington Times, New York Post, and Dallas Morning New reporter booted from Obamas plane after the papers endorse McCain. ...

That's what ALL POLITICIANS do.

They're in the business of rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies; it's Machiavelli 101.

 

[sr71plt]

That's what ALL POLITICIANS do.

They're in the business of rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies; it's Machiavelli 101.

This begs the question then of what the McCain campaign does on its campaign transport. (What does it do in providing access to its candidates by sources it doesn't consider favorable, for instance. Haven't we had a big stink about that concerning access to Palin?) It's only an issue in comparison. The comparison issue absent it's just partisan banter.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

AND McCain tossed NYT and others from his airplane.

What goes around comes around.

 

[john-the-author]

Didn't we all just learn that this also happens to be the fatal flaw with the free market?

It just occurred to me that the reason that we have things like Social Security and whatnot in the first place are not because they're capitalist ideals--far from it!--but because the idea of throwing people aside like used condoms finally got to be a bit too much. A properly capitalist/free market state would use people up, then throw them out when they're no longer productive and let 'em sink or swim on their own. Soylent Green, maybe. This is perhaps not the true ideal that most of us wanted for a society and so there are things that protect people and do a few things to prevent them from dying on the streets as often.

With this in mind, the question becomes "How much socialism do we want? What kind of society do we choose to live in and how do we treat its citizens?" Working backwards, we actually make a LOT more money as a society in which there is publicly-funded health care, because the citizenry are able to work harder, better, longer, and produce a lot more. They become producers instead of consumers and they don't soak up emergency health care/housing/food resources. We make a LOT more money when the citizenry are better educated because they can, again, produce more and they can even help create better solutions for the next generation. And in the meanwhile, everyone's happier and the communitas is enhanced and supported for

I feel obliged to point out that a truly Christian society would look a whole lot like an ideal communist state, because everyone would be working for the communitas rather than their own selves. (The goal of Christianity being that you do for others as you would have them do for you--true communism--rather than everyone being in this for themselves--capitalism.) I think you can still get beaten by an angry mob for saying that Christianity in politics = communism in large portions of Dumfuckistan in this country, but it's not like it's up for that much debate. If'n y'don't like it, find yourself a different religion or get over yourselves.

 

[Liar]

AND McCain tossed NYT and others from his airplane.

It's only hardcore if he did it in-flight.

 

[Stella_Omega]

... This is perhaps not the true ideal that most of us wanted for a society and so there are things that protect people and do a few things to prevent them from dying on the streets as often. ...

Anthropologists, when asked, will often say that they can tell where a human population changes to a human civilisation; they say they find evidence of broken and healed leg bones. Meaning that the individual was taken care of during the time he or she couldn't fend for themselves.

 

[sr71plt]

It just occurred to me that the reason that we have things like Social Security and whatnot in the first place are not because they're capitalist ideals--far from it!--but because the idea of throwing people aside like used condoms finally got to be a bit too much.

Unfortunately, there's another realistic reason too--one that zings right into the heart of the Bush "retirement plan" program and the McCain platform. People don't really, on the whole, forward think about their finances. When you give money to them, they buy flat-screen TVs and beer--they don't set up retirement or health plans. Which still leaves the rest of us holding the bag when they get to retirement or to the hospital and have nothing to live on. Programs like Social Security are as much to at least minimally protect those of us traditionally being left holding the bag for those who won't set up their own plans to take care of themselves as it is a bit of a cushion for retirees.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JOHN THE AUTHOR

One of the curious collateral aspects of Amerivcan slavery was its treatment of old people.

In the North workers were used up and discharged, replaced by kiddies. No provisions were made for old age and retirement.

In the South slaves remained in their cabins, on the plantations, and continued to receive shelter, clothing, food, and medical care until they died. Children, pregnant women, and the old worked abbreviated schedules doing light duties. That is, no strenuous physical labor. Mending clothes, sitting children, nursing the sick, etc.

In 1889, twenty-five years after emancipation, my great-great grandmother and her siblings were still caring for some of their elderly former slaves.

 

[Safe_Bet]

JOHN THE AUTHOR

One of the curious collateral aspects of Amerivcan slavery was its treatment of old people.

In the North workers were used up and discharged, replaced by kiddies. No provisions were made for old age and retirement.

In the South slaves remained in their cabins, on the plantations, and continued to receive shelter, clothing, food, and medical care until they died. Children, pregnant women, and the old worked abbreviated schedules doing light duties. That is, no strenuous physical labor. Mending clothes, sitting children, nursing the sick, etc.

In 1889, twenty-five years after emancipation, my great-great grandmother and her siblings were still caring for some of their elderly former slaves.

That's real BIG of them JBJ. After working them for free for their entire lives, selling off their brothers, sisters and parents and breeding them like animals, they let them live in the slave quarters when they are old. WOW! what a bunch of freakin saints!

 

[john-the-author]

Anthropologists, when asked, will often say that they can tell where a human population changes to a human civilisation; they say they find evidence of broken and healed leg bones. Meaning that the individual was taken care of during the time he or she couldn't fend for themselves.

I like that. It's a good significator.

 

[john-the-author]

Unfortunately, there's another realistic reason too--one that zings right into the heart of the Bush "retirement plan" program and the McCain platform. People don't really, on the whole, forward think about their finances. When you give money to them, they buy flat-screen TVs and beer--they don't set up retirement or health plans. Which still leaves the rest of us holding the bag when they get to retirement or to the hospital and have nothing to live on. Programs like Social Security are as much to at least minimally protect those of us traditionally being left holding the bag for those who won't set up their own plans to take care of themselves as it is a bit of a cushion for retirees.

I think you're right about that, SR. (Kinda has a parallel to not letting the monkeys have the keys to the banana plantation, don't it?)

When I've got more time, I'll tell you the story about why you keep prisoners in lockdown right before they're due to be released. It has strong parallels in the publishing biz, which is how I learned about it.

 

[Katyusha]

Well, not everyone, but they are usually better off than those who have loafed all their lives, as they should be. I am referring to those who have no physical or mental problems, but seem to think the world owes them a living.

Those people bother the hell out of me too, but if you look at people like my husband and me, struggling to make ends meet despite our educations and how hard we work at our jobs...we feel wholly ignored by the government when it comes to tax breaks. They give them to the wealthy and they give them to the poor, and people like me end up picking up the slack from that. So we're to be punished anyway?

We saw the result of trickle-down economics in the '80s and we're seeing it again now. I don't know why people think it works, because it doesn't. The wealthy, and especially the corporations, use those tax breaks to further line their own pockets. We need some type of tax break for the middle class so that we don't keep having to make up for the rich and the corporations getting out of paying taxes that they should owe. No, I do NOT believe that they should be taxed to the point where their take-home income is comparable to mine. But I just don't have the money or the energy anymore to continue to shoulder the burden of the result of giving tax breaks to those in the upper echelons. And neither do most of us in the middle class.

 

[Stella_Omega]

That's real BIG of them JBJ. After working them for free for their entire lives, selling off their brothers, sisters and parents and breeding them like animals, they let them live in the slave quarters when they are old. WOW! what a bunch of freakin saints!

"Food clothing and shelter" meant whatever the owner decided it meant. Might not mean much.

And of course, many old broke-down slaves did get sold off, or turned off to fend for themselves, to die in the woods or survive if they could.

 

[john-the-author]

That's real BIG of them JBJ. After working them for free for their entire lives, selling off their brothers, sisters and parents and breeding them like animals, they let them live in the slave quarters when they are old. WOW! what a bunch of freakin saints!

I agree with you--the generosity of this does just make me go all warm and oogy. I think the phrase "Mighty white o' them" is purely applicable here, Safe_Bet.

 

[Katyusha]

Obamas agenda: If you don't love me I won't allow you to be around.

Washington Times, New York Post, and Dallas Morning New reporter booted from Obamas plane after the papers endorse McCain.

Just what we need, childish stupidity in the Whitehouse, oh wait, that was the way Clinton did it.

Has this guy ever made a "good" decision?

Because God knows no other politician of parties other than the Democrats have ever been childish and stupid, in or out of the White House.

As for "good" decisions? That's a matter of opinion. I could rattle of a list of decisions he's made that I consider good, and you'll just come back with all the ways that they are NOT good. But the same can be said if you were to sing McCain's praises to me.

It DOES go both ways.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

SAFE_BET

There was no qualitative difference between slavery and bondage to a mill or miner. The circumstances were even worse in Wales where there were no slaves...and Ireland.

The difference between a slave and a peasant is: The slaveowner has to feed and care for a slave, to protect his investment. Slaves arent free. Peasants are.

 

[Boxlicker101]

In other words, like your average business.

Actually, that's unfair. Most businesses are feudal in structure rather than Communistic.

Actually, Rob, your average business would be a store or service station or other small business, run by one person or one family. It might even be incorporated, but it is still a small operation. There are many times more operations like that than there are multinationals.

 

[sr71plt]

Actually, Rob, your average business would be a store or service station or other small business, run by one person or one family. It might even be incorporated, but it is still a small operation. There are many times more operations like that than there are multinationals.

And there's nothing feudal about a family-operated business, is there?

 

[Boxlicker101]

And there's nothing feudal about a family-operated business, is there?

No. At least as far as I undestand the word "feudal."

 

[sweetness6280]

And there's nothing feudal about a family-operated business, is there?

You obviously never worked for MY father.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

OK, I'm convinced. All you have to do is repeat it enough times, and you've won me over. Yes, indeedy.

And you wonder why I had you on ignore. Arrogance and libel come to mind. I'm not a doctrinaire Libertarian anymore, but I don't care to see them put down like this. They have principles. They are not leeches. And, yes, they do believe that their system would work, if truly given a chance (in other words, no corporate welfare and massive federal agencies, for instance, a point on which I agree with them).

Where I dissent from the hard-core Libertarian purist is on those issues where the private sector has demonstrated an unwillingness or inability to provide adequate services, such as self-policing on the environment (not gonna happen, sorry, but it just ain't), building needed infrastructure, a handful of truly basic and necessary social services (pensions for the elderly and disabled, emergency and preventive health care), and foreign trade (sorry, but outsourcing proves that the mercenary motives weigh more than patriotism for certain CEOs).

But, again, a return to tariffs, excises, and land taxes (since agribusinesses are one of the most subsidized corporations and do owe back payment of their corporate welfare), as well as user fees, could well cover much of the needed revenue (once you privatize AMTRAK, for once).

Oddly, I'm probably one of the few people who advocate privatizing railways while implementing some form of socialized medicine. At state level, of course, since I still uphold the Constitution.

But, in any case, I don't advocate the Fairness Doctrine or the abolition of the union secret ballot, two despicable ideas which are part of the Obama agenda.

But, again, I'm a true maverick overall. Unlike McCain or Obama.

 

[DeeZire]

It just occurred to me that the reason that we have things like Social Security and whatnot in the first place are not because they're capitalist ideals--far from it!--but because the idea of throwing people aside like used condoms finally got to be a bit too much.....

Nice post. This does, in a nutshell, show the big disconnect between right wing rhetoric and real life. Too bad they don't teach this in school.